State-of-the-art image processing and data storage subsystems, integrated by Sierra Nevada Corporation into an MQ-9 Reaper-mounted pod, provide unmatched EO/IR persistent surveillance capabilities to the warfighter

CHELMSFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 15, 2011-- Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: MRCY, www.mc.com), a trusted provider of commercially developed application-ready ISR subsystems for defense prime contractors, announced that its Mercury Federal Systems subsidiary is part of the Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC)-led team that was named the 2011 C4ISR Journal Big 25 Awards Top Sensor award winner. The award was presented at the 11^th Annual C4ISR Journal Conference in Washington D.C.

"Mercury is honored to be part of this award-winning team and proud to provide the onboard real-time processing technology that enables our forces to secure actionable intelligence and gain persistent situational awareness and of ground activities in near-real time," said Dr. Paul Monticciolo, general manager, Mercury Federal Systems. "Mercury's flexible, SWaP-optimized processing architecture delivers unmatched performance through new on-board capabilities for Sierra Nevada's system solution, enabling the most powerful data processing and exploitation to occur closer to the sensor while overcoming air-to-ground communications bottlenecks."

Each year the editorial staff of C4ISR Journal selects the Big 25 programs and innovations within the ISR community and, with selected outside defense intelligence community experts, gathers to choose the Top 5 award winners. At the annual Conference and Awards Ceremony, the C4ISR community gathers together to publicly honor the Big 25 and announce the Top 5 winners which are selected from five categories: Platforms; Sensors; Networks; Agencies and Organizations; and Innovations.

The United States Air Force (USAF)'s Gorgon Stare (GS) Wide-Area Persistent Surveillance System, developed by the SNC-led, best-of-breed industry team under the USAF/Big Safari rapid acquisition program, has been flying operational missions since April, 2011. Hosted on a USAF/General Atomics long-dwell MQ-9 Reaper unmanned air vehicle, each GS orbit provides uninterrupted, 24/7 visible and IR coverage of city-sized areas, providing real-time motion video directly to theater and tactical forces engaged in operations. In addition to its primary tactical consumers, this game-changing system also provides these products in near real-time to the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) enterprise for unprecedentedly rapid exploitation and time-sensitive forensic analysis support. The entire mission data set, which is recorded onboard the aircraft in machine-lossless format, is provided post-mission for live, long-term archiving and discovery, and additional current exploitation.

In addition to Mercury Federal Systems, SNC's Increment 1 partners included ITT Geospatial Systems, MIT/LL, L3, Gitchner, and AdamWorks. SNC is currently under USAF contract to develop the next generation of Gorgon Stare systems. In addition to its Increment 1 partners, the SNC-led Increment 2 team adds BAE Systems as the next-generation visible sensor provider. The SNC-led Gorgon Stare team, which included Mercury, also won this award in 2009 for developing a system of five electro-optical still cameras and four infrared cameras to be installed on Reaper UAVs for day and night wide-area surveillance.

Rugged, Open Processing Technology

Mercury's on-board, real-time sensor signal processing subsystem utilizes open, standards-based 6U OpenVPX^™ architecture and includes the following commercial computing hardware and software building blocks: OpenVPX GPU processing module, Switch module, Intel^® Core i7^™-based Server module, and Imaging Toolkit. Together, these modules are used to execute the advanced real-time algorithms to generate the EO and IR imagery products. Mercury's ruggedized solid state disk drive-based Digital Storage Unit stores mission data for both immediate exploitation and longer term forensic analysis.

For more information, visit www.mc.com, or contact Mercury at (866) 627-6951 or info@mc.com.

Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. - Where Challenges Drive Innovation^®

Mercury Computer Systems (www.mc.com, NASDAQ: MRCY) is a best of breed provider of open, commercially developed, application-ready, multi-INT subsystems for defense prime contractors. With more than 30 years of experience in embedded computing, superior domain expertise in radar, EW, EO/IR, C4I, and sonar applications, and more than 300 successful program deployments including Aegis, Global Hawk, and Predator, Mercury's Services and Systems Integration team leads the industry in partnering with customers to design and integrate system-level solutions that minimize program risk, maximize application portability, and accelerate customers' time to market.

Mercury is based in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, and serves customers worldwide through a broad network of direct sales offices, subsidiaries, and distributors.

Forward-Looking Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements, as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including those relating to the products and services provided for the products and services described above. You can identify these statements by the use of the words "may," "will," "could," "should," "plans," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimate," "project," "intend," "likely," "probable, "and similar expressions. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general economic and business conditions, including unforeseen weakness in the Company's markets, effects of continued geopolitical unrest and regional conflicts, competition, changes in technology and methods of marketing, delays in completing engineering and manufacturing programs, changes in customer order patterns, changes in product mix, continued success in technological advances and delivering technological innovations, continued funding of defense programs, the timing of such funding, changes in the U.S. Government's interpretation of federal procurement rules and regulations, market acceptance of the Company's products, shortages in components, production delays due to performance quality issues with outsourced components, inability to fully realize the expected benefits from acquisitions and divestitures or delays in realizing such benefits, challenges in integrating acquired businesses and achieving anticipated synergies, changes to export regulations, increases in tax rates, changes to generally accepted accounting principles, difficulties in retaining key employees and customers, unanticipated costs under fixed-price service and system integration engagements, and various other factors beyond our control. These risks and uncertainties also include such additional risk factors as are discussed in the Company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011. The Company cautions readers not to place undue reliance upon any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which such statement is made.

Challenges Drive Innovation, Ensemble and Echotek are registered trademarks and Application Ready Subsystem and ARS are trademarks of Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Source: Mercury Computer Systems, Inc.

Mercury Computer Systems, Inc.
Robert McGrail, +1 978-967-1366
Director of Corporate Communications
rmcgrail@mc.com